Hello, Tejay
I'm glad you love the sound! Thank you for the kind words. They do look pretty cool in person, don't they? I'm also glad your Pioneer sounds fine on them.
I have sent you a copy of the original C-1 Owner's Guide.
I answer a lot of questions regarding the soundstage one should hear. With the speakers set up as in the Owner' Guide, very occasionally you will hear sounds to the far left and right of you- they have to be in the recording.
Specifically, Roger Waters used phase-cancellation tricks between your two ears, on his album Amused to Death, to place a barking dog directly to your left? side, through an open door ten feet away, 20 feet down a long hallway.
Overhead sounds can be heard on Chesky-label's Clark Terry Live at the Village Gate. During the spoken introduction between the first and second songs, you can hear what sounds like a very large party, up and over a high wall a little outboard of the left speaker and at least ten feet behind the speaker. You can look right up at that sound as in real life, and it does not vary as you move your head. We can even hear it up-and-over-there when not seated in the middle. It sounds like a bachelor party over that wall.
Such a height-event is happenstance, a by-product of mic placement(s) versus the sound source and its distance to the mic(s)- three variables, so height cannot be predicted ahead of time by the recording engineer.
The Clark Terry recording was made using a single stereo ribbon microphone, which lets you hear the sax player walk up to the mic as he slides into his solo, then fall back about eight feet. You can hear the drummer always back about 8-10 feet.
All of these locations are audible because simple microphone techniques captured some of the sound of the acoustic space in which the artists played. Our speakers let you hear that space, that distance, if it is on the recording. This is because space to a microphone is simply 'distance' with no angle. We get only one dimension from one microphone, which is 'depth.' Two microphones = stereo, and hopefully two similar images of the same 'depth', such as on the older classical and jazz recordings.
Distance and echoes occur in time after hearing the 'direct sound' from the artist(s). Our speakers preserve the timing on all sounds from low to high, so that a tweeter's too-soon arrival does not push its range of sounds towards you (one example). Which sounds like height for reasons I do not know.
Multiple microphones on the same sound-source confuse the depth of image, because there are now two or more of everything, which also do not sound 'the same' at those different angles and/or distances.
To hear natural studio/small-nightclub imaging, try older jazz records from the Blue Note, ECM, and Verve record labels- just the regular CDs are fine. Some of the echo may be fake, generated by an EMT Echo Plate or Capitol Records' echo chambers, but still sounds natural. Try some of the old Mercury Living Presence and RCA Living Stereo classical CDs, where only the natural ambiance was captured. All were recorded with only a few microphones.
Reminder: To hear the best imaging (and most enjoy the music) take off eyeglasses and close your eyes. It takes about 30 seconds for the visual part of your brain to relax, to then be used for localization of what the ears hear. You find your eyes moving behind closed eyelids, watching the performers.
Note on our speakers how steady, sharp, and real those images are in space, regardless of their tonality, timbre, loudness, or the complexity of other sounds around. If you hear shifts in location, it is not our speakers, assuming you have the midrange and tweeter modules properly aligned (see Owner's Guide).
Maximum depth of image I have heard is upwards of 50 feet way, behind the speakers. I don't think there is an upper limit to that distance. There is a true reference recording for such imaging (and with breathtaking dynamics): http://www.elusivedisc.com/prodinfo.asp?number=GSDX002 Major talent on this disc, not 'audiophile-grade' artists, but ones truly world class. Originally an analog recording done on reel to reel in 1981.
On that recording and many others you will hear the precision and placement from left-to-right and front-to-rear, out there in front of you, sometimes with the performers standing outboard of the left and right speakers from 5 to 15 degrees. This happens even on rock and pop recordings, at least with our speakers. On rare occasion, I can hear the concert hall wrap around me- usually on a classical piece. It has to be a really good listening room at that point, with great gear and a very quiet background.
Speakers limit the accuracy of such imaging when they are not time coherent between woofer, mid, and tweeter. In fact, almost of what you read about images floating up above speakers is the audible result of tweeters that are `way out of phase with their midrange drivers, possibly with a polarity reversal too! I write about this on our website- http://www.greenmountainaudio.com/recorded-sound/
For whatever reason, we interpret that phase shift/timing smear as height- and any listener can point directly to that image up there (usually reported on violins and high voices = tweeter time-coherence problem).
That height, though, is not in the recording, because microphones do not know 'height', but only distance without any direction attached, exactly like listening through a hole in a wooden fence. Since that height is an indicator of a lack of tweeter time-coherence with the mid, then that speaker also distorts aggressive rock recordings enough to make women leave the room-- the common excuse by the man is "these speakers are too revealing!" Bull.
Hearing the best imaging leads directly to hearing the most music. With careful setup, you are not too close to these speakers in your present setup. Have fun!
Best regards,
Roy Johnson
Designer
Green Mountain Audio
